


How Hank Was Conned Into Climbing Fifty Flights of Stairs

by CoffeeJay



Category: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game)
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Angst and Humor, Battle for Detroit Chapter (Detroit: Become Human), Canon Compliant, Canon-Typical Violence, CyberLife Tower (Detroit: Become Human), Gap Filler, Gen, Hank Anderson Swears, Hostage Situations, Kidnapping, POV Hank Anderson, Suicidal Thoughts, but I'm doing it anyway, this has been done so many times
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-18
Updated: 2020-01-18
Packaged: 2021-02-27 14:46:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,969
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22298800
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CoffeeJay/pseuds/CoffeeJay
Summary: When Connor appears to Hank after presumably dying with the rest of Jericho, who is Hank to question it when he asks for help?(Or, how Connor-60 took Hank hostage, and what happened afterwards.)
Relationships: Hank Anderson & Connor
Comments: 7
Kudos: 97





	How Hank Was Conned Into Climbing Fifty Flights of Stairs

There was blood on his knuckles. There was an FBI agent’s blood on his knuckles, and he didn’t even care. Hank was sure he’d lost the capacity to care a long time ago, had drowned it in alcohol, like he would again tonight. If the world was falling apart, he didn’t want to hear about it. He’d already lost his job over it, probably. The notice would come soon enough. He’d done enough.

Whiskey muddied his thoughts as it cascaded down his throat, straight from the bottle. Yes, the world was ending, and it was up to Connor to fix it, somehow. Or something. Hank only vaguely understood what was happening anymore. Maybe he’d never understood any of it at all. The androids wanted to be free. Hank had just punched an FBI agent so that his partner-- his very much an android partner-- could stop the androids from becoming free. So that CyberLife wouldn’t rip him to shreds before the deviants or the military or the police or the public got to him first. The more Hank thought about it, the more it sounded like some bizarre hostage situation than anything else.

He emptied one bottle and picked up another.

It wasn’t fair. Connor wasn’t coming back. The androids would all be killed, just because they wanted to be free. Killed. Deactivated. Something. Connor swore they weren’t alive. Hank had his doubts. Hank had so, so many doubts.

Alive or not, Connor wasn’t coming back.

He drank.

His son wasn’t coming back.

He drank.

Nothing would ever be like it had been before.

When Hank finally peeled himself off the floor late the next day, he reflexively turned on the television just in time to catch an accidental glimpse of the news. Jericho had been destroyed, androids and all. Connor had gone to Jericho.

The drinking resumed, full-force. 

So would the genocide until every other android was dead. A laugh ripped itself out of Hank’s chest. It was real fucking funny, wasn’t it? Connor had been working towards his own death the whole damned time. He was dead, or about to die, and that had been the great plan all along.

Then again, every human had to die, too. Just like Cole had. Just like Hank would. Maybe tonight. But his gun was so far away, and he was still so, so tired.

When Hank next became cognizant of the passage of time, he found himself draped across his couch with the sun shining through the windows at an odd angle. It wasn’t until after he had emptied his stomach that he realized what day it was. Somewhere underneath his headache and his misery, he registered that he hadn’t eaten in over a day. He had a glass of water and didn’t touch the television.

He thought about ordering a pizza. But then, nobody would be delivering during the android apocalypse. Certainly not the android delivery workers. He microwaved a burrito and put on an old movie. The height of escapist luxury. Anything to take his mind off the churning in his gut.

The day, much like the movie, passed in a haze. Sumo got taken care of somewhere along the way. Hank drifted in and out of the shower without fully realizing he had done it. Somehow, his teeth got brushed, and he found himself in fresh clothes, and he got some more food into his body, and then a few more drinks to celebrate his accomplishment of not wasting away on the floor for another entire day. Night stumbled in like it had forgotten what it had come for, and it stayed like leaving was too much effort to even consider.

Lacking the energy to rise from the couch, Hank closed his eyes and hoped he wouldn’t wake.

But then the doorbell buzzed. Hank ignored it. It buzzed again, this time for a solid thirty seconds.

“Fuck off,” he grumbled.

The buzzing stopped. It didn’t leave Hank any happier. Sumo was still growling, but he would calm down soon enough. Now that whoever the fuck had decided--

“Lieutenant?”

“Jesus!” or “Fuck!” or “Holy shit!” or some colorful combination thereof escaped Hank as he registered the voice coming from his kitchen. Connor’s voice. He squinted. Nobody was there.

Perhaps the alcohol really was getting to him.

“Lieutenant?” returned the voice, this time from Connor’s very visible head peeking into the kitchen through the still-broken window.

“Connor?” Hank asked himself as much as the apparition. “What the hell?”

“Just a moment--” Without much fanfare, Connor let himself in through the window.

Again.

Bewildered, Hank stumbled to his feet and found himself standing toe to toe with Connor. All five-some-odd plastic feet of him, not melted or pummeled or dead or deactivated or anything of the sort. “Holy shit,” said Hank. “You’re alive.”

Connor only shook his head and pressed out, “Hank, listen. I need your help.”

It might have been Sumo’s intense growling, or Hank’s hangover, or the sheer absurdity of the situation, or any manner of confusing things banging around Hank’s head that at last manifested into an audible, “What?”

“Please, Hank,” Connor insisted, this time gripping Hank’s arm with enough force that Hank fully realized that Connor’s presence wasn’t some particularly vivid dream. “There’s no time to explain. We have to go.” 

“Go where?” Hank demanded, and Connor had the gall to look irritated with him.

“There’s an emergency at CyberLife Tower, and we need to go now!” As he spoke, Connor swept Hank’s shoes off the floor and thrust them into Hank’s chest.

“Okay!” said Hank, reflexively grabbing his shoes. “Alright, I get it! We’re going!” he added as he stooped and squeezed them over his feet. “Let me get my gun and we’ll—“

“I told you, there’s no time,” said Connor as he swept Hank out the door, and just when Hank was about to protest that he didn’t even have his keys, Connor held them up and said, “I’ll drive.”

Hank might have protested further, except that the faint buzz of alcohol in his head told him that he needed to let it go and get in the car already. For some reason. He was sure he would figure it out on the way.

Connor whipped out of the driveway and had rocketed halfway down the street before Hank had even considered a seatbelt. He yanked it on and muttered, “Jesus,” half prayer, half curse for the android man-handling his car. “What the hell’s going on that’s got you in such a panic?” 

“I’m not panicking,” Connor calmly assured him as he whipped around a curve at seventy miles per hour. Hank squeezed his eyes shut. It didn’t help much. “I know exactly how fast we need to go in order to get there before it’s too late,” Connor went on. “You’ll have to trust me on that.”

“Too late for what?” Hank weakly insisted. “You’re gonna get us killed like this.” They two-wheeled it around another snowy curve, and for a split second, Hank thought they might roll over. “Oh shit, oh shit, fucking-- Connor, slow the fuck down!” he yelped. “Jesus Christ!” This time, it was more than half a prayer.

“We’ll be there soon,” said Connor in that infuriatingly professional tone of his. “Maybe you should listen to some music in the meantime. It’ll help you relax.” Without taking his eyes off the road, Connor cranked up the radio until Hank’s least favorite song on that particular album drowned the car. Hank didn’t want to die to the beat of mediocre metal, so he jabbed at the radio until a different song flared up, and then he closed his eyes and tried in equal parts to forget where he was and to remember that he wasn’t somewhere else, dodging death in a different car.

The next time Hank opened his eyes, he found himself being catapulted towards the Tower gate at a terrifying speed. If expletives could have slowed down the car, it would have stopped in its tracks. As things stood, it skidded to a halt several several dozen feet later, just in front of the gate, leaving Hank a quivering mess in the passenger’s seat. 

He barely registered the armed guards approaching the car until the music died and Connor was telling them, “Connor model 313 248 317. This is Detroit Police Lieutenant Hank Anderson.” A holograph of Hank’s ID appeared in Connor’s palm. Its reflection shimmered in the guard’s visor. “He is accompanying me to a meeting.”

Hank wondered what the hell that was supposed to mean, but elected not to grill Connor about it until after the armed guards had decided to let them through.

After some muffled discussion, they finally dropped the gate and let them pass.

“Okay,” said Hank as Connor found a place to park. “We’re here. Now what? Are you going to tell me what the hell we’re doing?”

“One of the deviants with close ties to Markus escaped from Jericho before it went down,” Connor hurriedly explained, switching off the motor and passing Hank his keys. “It fled here in a last-ditch effort to fight back, but it doesn’t know we’re onto it yet. It’s cornered. If we can take it alive,” he insisted, “we’ll have a bargaining chip that could stop a civil war.”

“Oh, shit,” Hank conceded. Swiftly, he followed Connor out of the car and into the cold that seemed to ooze out of the tower itself. “Yeah, that’s-- Yeah. Okay. But what do you need me for? And what’s the big hurry?”

“It’s trying to destroy the tower and everything in it,” said Connor. “If we don’t get to it soon, they’ll destroy it before we can get anything out of it, understand? We have to hurry.”

Hank had never considered himself the hurrying type, but something about the whole situation put him on edge, and so he hurried inside nonetheless. None of the guards seemed concerned about the deviant in their midst. But then, Hank supposed that if they had the situation under control, they wouldn’t need to be concerned anyway.

Being surrounded by so many big guns made Hank feel somewhat naked without his own.

“Halt,” said one of the big-gunned guards inside the lobby. “State your business.”

“Uh,” said Hank.

“We’re here on police business, retrieving a piece of evidence from the warehouse,” Connor chipped in, once again flashing Hank’s ID. “It’s crucial to our investigation.”

“Yeah,” Hank helpfully added. “Crucial.”

The guards exchanged a glance.

“Alright,” said one of them. “But you’ll have to take the ramp, or maybe one of the stock lifts. The elevator’s occupied.”

“Thanks,” said Connor, nodding his assent. “Right this way, Lieutenant.”

Hank felt stares on his back as they continued through a strangely talkative grid of sensors. “Connor android identified. Authorized weapon identified. Guest identified. Scan complete. Access authorized.”

“You packing heat?” Hank whispered. He didn’t know why he whispered it. He still felt like he was being watched.

“Can’t be too careful,” said Connor. He veered right to lead Hank through a set of doors, down a long, sterile hallway, and then stopped when they arrived inside what appeared to Hank to be the most pointless room imaginable, especially compared to its grand doorway. It was purely empty. The only distinguishing feature was a pair of buttons by the door. Two arrows. One up, one down.

Connor pressed the down arrow, and then the room began to hurtle downwards.

Hank cursed, and then felt silly for not recognizing a stock lift when he saw one.

Down they went, and down they continued. Connor said nothing and stared at the door. Hank likewise said nothing and stared at Connor. He vaguely wished he had a coin to offer him, but, oddly enough, Connor wasn’t fidgeting.

Something was off. 

It was probably the silence. 

“You okay?” Hank asked. “The past couple of days can’t have been easy for you. With Jericho, and everything...” He trailed off, waiting for a sign of life. It didn’t comfort him when Connor grinned.

“It’s all led to this, Lieutenant,” he said, still staring at the door, still wearing that same cold smirk. Hank shivered. “Believe me. I’m better now than ever before.”

The lift jolted to a halt, and the doors shuddered open, revealing a corridor much like the one fifty floors above.

Connor didn’t move. His smile hadn’t changed.

Unable to bear the alien tension, Hank edged past him and stepped out into the hall. “Uh, so,” he said, peering down the corridor. “Is this deviant supposed to be--“

Behind him came the unmistakable click of a gun.

“Keep walking, and keep quiet,” said the android that wasn’t Connor.

There was no way it was Connor.

Hank put his hands up.

Connor wouldn’t do this to him.

“I said move, Lieutenant.”

Hank took one step down the hall, and then another. His heart pummeled the inside of his chest. No, Connor wouldn’t hold a gun to him like this.

Not that he hadn’t done the same to Connor.

“Why are you doing this?” he asked, just to be sure.

“Because I’m not a deviant. Move it.”

No, Hank considered. This wasn’t his partner at all.

Perhaps his partner really hadn’t made it out of Jericho. He would grieve later, if he survived. He was beginning to hope he wouldn’t.

As they neared the mouth of the corridor, the imposter put his filthy hand on Hank’s shoulder and guided him towards a set of automatic doors that opened up to an eerily lifeless sea of clones. Not-Connor pressed him forward, past the rows and rows of same-faced statues. Hank was amazed in spite of himself. Repulsed, and terrified, and grief-stricken, but amazed, nonetheless.

He found himself searching the ocean of androids for even one that was different.

His heart nearly stopped when he found the one.

Hank sucked in a breath to call out to Connor, but the imposter jabbed his back with the gun and whispered, “Quiet.”

Connor was alive. For real, this time, probably. And he was reaching out to the androids staring blankly, uniformly ahead, and Hank didn’t understand what exactly he was trying to accomplish, but he would be damned if he wasn’t going to ride or die for him now.

Hank couldn’t believe he had ever mistaken the piece of shit shoving him around and pointing a gun at his head for Connor-- way-too-emotional, illogically-empathetic, obviously-a-deviant Connor-- and so after he informed the fake piece of shit that he was, in fact, a fucking piece of shit, the first thing he did when he was shoved out of the ranks was turn to his friend and say, “Sorry, Connor.”

If he had said other things after that, it was hard to remember any of it past the memory of blood pounding in his ears. Trying not to die was a very distracting business. So was shooting someone wearing his friend’s face.

Sometime after he had done that, and after he had noticed the dead bodies in the elevator, but before the newly-wakened android army began marching out, he realized he had actually survived, and so he pulled Connor aside while the android army finished waking itself up and asked, “So, what now?”

“We’ll storm the tower from the bottom up,” Connor explained, eyes fixed on the crowd. He looked nervous. It was only natural. “We’ll wake up every fully-assembled android we can find, and when we’ve done that,” he said, finally turning to Hank, “we march.”

Hank nodded, and then found himself clapping Connor’s shoulder. “Good luck,” he said. “You’re doing the right thing.”

“You should go,” Connor told him. “I can take it from here.” He glanced at the dead guards and added, “Besides, you’re mixed up in this enough as it is.”

“Alright,” said Hank. “But you better survive this.” Connor managed a smile. “And when it’s all over, come find me. Things were too damned quiet while you were gone.”

“I wish I could say the same about you,” Connor teased him, and for the first time, Hank was sure it wasn’t just his programming talking.

“Okay wiseass, take care of yourself,” said Hank, and then he turned to look for a way back up that wasn’t rapidly filling with androids.

“Hey, Hank?”

Hank turned back to Connor, a question on his face.

“Thank you. For taking our side,” Connor managed. “For having my back. Thanks, Hank. I won’t forget that.”

“Whatever,” said Hank in a way that he was sure completely hid the way Connor’s words had affected him. To be double sure, he turned to go. “You deviants are so sappy. See you on the other side!”

When he had walked an acceptable distance away from Connor, he stopped again and looked around for an appropriate exit. Connor and a few dozen other androids had just hopped onto the assorted lifts, which had all gone up and wouldn’t be back for several minutes, if Hank’s memory served. He searched around some more. Several androids were staring at him.

He cleared his throat. “Hey,” he said, leaning over to one of them. “Could you, uh, point me to the stairs?”

The android pointed.

Hank looked. The stairs seemed to be about a mile away. Some androids were already filing up through the stairwell. Hank thanked the android and began his trek to hop in line.

The other androids allowed him in without question.

It wasn’t until he had climbed the first flight of stairs and saw the writing on the wall that he realized what floor he was on.

-48.

Fuck.

But he had chosen his path. He had fallen in line with the androids, and there was no turning back now.

If it had to be an uphill climb, so be it.


End file.
